Most trip planners forget a trip the day it ends. Waiz keeps it. Every trip you plan, with its cities and dates, becomes part of Scratch Map: a globe of everywhere you have been and everywhere you are about to go. You do not fill it in; it builds itself from the trips you already have.
What ends up on the globe
- Visited cities appear as small 3D models: 52 famous cities get their own landmark, and every other city gets a little town in its region's style.
- Upcoming cities stand as unbuilt clay. When a trip ends, its cities rise into full colour with a short celebration, once.
- Countries you have been to get a gold rim along their borders.
- Trip-mates show up as small avatars on cities you visited together.
The rest is there to make it feel like a planet: the real position of the sun with night lights on the dark side, drifting clouds, aurora near the poles, and the odd plane or ship going about its business.
Replay how you actually travelled
The replay button flies a little vehicle from your home city through each trip, stop by stop, and leaves a trail behind it. Waiz picks the vehicle from what it knows about the leg:
- A booked flight, train, bus or ferry in the trip decides the vehicle and its layovers.
- A rail pass or a cruise covers every stop it calls at.
- A rental car drives the overland legs during its dates.
- Otherwise distance and terrain decide: a short hop over land is a drive, a longer one a train, water means a ferry, and anything far is a flight.
The camera stays low for short hops and pulls out for long-haul legs, then swoops back down. All the trails stay drawn when it finishes, which is the picture worth a screenshot.
Zoom in, then go somewhere new
Pinch down to a region and the globe shows country and city names in your phone's language, plus the stops from your trips. Tap a city you have been to for a card with your trips there, oldest first. Tap a landmark you have not visited and you get a card to plan a trip there, which opens the trip wizard with that city already filled in. From there you can edit the draft by chatting before you save it.
Prefer a flat map? The switch at the top flips between globe and map at any time.
Getting your past trips onto it
Scratch Map reads the trips in your account. To fill in older travel, create a trip for it with its city and dates; there is no need to plan the days. A trip whose end date has passed counts as visited.
Scratch Map is free in Waiz 1.2 and later.
A scratch map that fills itself in
A scratch-off poster is a nice gift and a chore to keep up: you remember to scratch a country months later, and it only knows countries. Scratch Map works from the trips themselves, so it knows cities, dates and who came along, and it is up to date the day a trip ends.
Some ways people use it:
- A year in review. Run the replay in December and screenshot the trails it leaves.
- Counting countries. The count at the bottom of the globe keeps the score for you.
- Picking the next trip. Spin to a region with no gold borders yet and tap a landmark to start planning it.
- Remembering who was there. Trip-mates on a city are a quick answer to "who came to Lisbon that time?"
Questions
Do I have to plan every day of an old trip?
No. A city and dates are enough. A trip whose end date has passed counts as visited.
Does it count upcoming trips?
Yes, as unbuilt clay. Their cities rise into full colour once the trip is over.
Is there a flat version?
Yes. The switch at the top flips between the globe and a flat map.
